


[To the tune of Final Countdown] “It’s a mental breakdown!”

by secreterces5



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Meltdown, Not sure what to call it exactly, Panic Attacks, Platonic “I love you”s, Roman and Remus fuse, There’s a few f-words and s-words in this I’m sorry, This is short and dramatic but has a good ending :), Thomas has a panic attack/meltdown, and so am i, but I don’t ship them with Thomas, but he’s not feeling good, but it’s not an angst thing they’re just working together finally, dad jokes and puns, everyone is sympathetic and everyone is kinda doing things out of character, joan saves the day and I love them, metaphorical monsters, or at least out of their comfort zone and job description, they’re all stressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:08:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24358588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secreterces5/pseuds/secreterces5
Summary: *depressed kazoo plays in the background*Patton and Logan fight a beast with jokes, Janus and Virgil have to save Thomas, and Roman and Remus have fused. Basically what happens is the Sides are coping with some very, very bad overwhelming feelings Thomas is having.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 41





	[To the tune of Final Countdown] “It’s a mental breakdown!”

**Author's Note:**

> There are no official ships included here. You can see them as such, and don’t have to. Did I see some of them as ships when writing this? You’ll never know. I do not, however, romantically ship character Thomas and character Joan. They’re too similar to their real counterparts.  
> This is inspired by the Dad Thomas vines that imply his dad jokes do actual physical damage, and an idea I had while rambling about this in one Discord server.  
> King are a fusion of Remus and Roman, obviously, and they represent an all-encompassing creativity. Mostly they’re here because FuSiOn MaKeS wEaK gEmS sTrOnGeR!

A thundering roar shook the mind palace once again. Each and every room was seconds from crumbling, shadows were flooding everything at a pace too fast to handle, and in the midst of all this chaos, the Sides stood before a mighty monster, tall and terrifying, and dark not like the night sky or the worst storm, but an empty void, a nothingness that was cold and heavy and eternal.

Patton, Virgil and Logan all desperately held onto each other and helplessly looked on as the nothingness hurled towards them, but then was thwarted off by a tall knight dressed in the warmest brown, with a red and green sash across their chest and a crown sitting askew in their ruffled hair. “Don’t you even dare touch my friends without consent, vile beast!” they growled and raised their axe, golden and black and deadly sharp. “Janus!” they yelled.

Six hands wrapped around one of the monster’s hind legs, preventing it from moving away. “Take your time, King, we’re definitely not running out of time here!” the deceitful side replied, straining to keep the nightmarish creature in place.

“We don’t get it, we’ve been throwing everything at it, we’ve been working like crazy, why is it getting worse?!” King yelled, summoning and giving life to another creation, but the black mass took over it in a matter of seconds and devoured it whole. “You asshole, we loved that one so much, how dare you ruin it!” they yelled and swung their axe at the beast.

“What even is that?!” Patton spoke in a panicked voice, unable to take his eyes off the fight.

“Well, with everything that’s been going on, it could be a manifestation of all the built-up sadness and fear and insecurities that Thomas has been experiencing,” Logan said in one breath, speaking quicker than usual, just as stressed as the others.

“No shit!” Virgil half groaned, half screamed from where he was sitting curled into a ball between the two. The shadows under his eyes covered so much of his cheeks he kind of looked like Spinel from the Steven Universe movie. For the last half an hour, Patton had been holding onto him tightly and Logan was at his side and info-dumping, both bring precautions to keep him grounded, but it was barely working anymore and if they lose Virgil to a panic attack, their chances of not losing sanity completely will significantly drop.

But then, something clicked. Wide-eyed, Patton grinned at the monster. “I know what we have to do!”

King turned to him, out of breath, clutching their axe. “Morality, we’d love to hear it but first we _really_ have to get rid of this and unless you’re hiding a canon in your cardigan we highly doubt you’ll be any help right now!”

“We have to laugh it off!” he stood up, letting go of Virgil.

“Patton, wait, don’t!” the Side in purple cried out, “you can’t–”

“I can and I have to! Your Highness, I’ll need a stage!”

“Are you fucking serious?!”

“Ha, more like _nightm-are_ you effing serious, am I right? Because it looks nightmarish?”

The dark creature froze. Its gaze shifted from King towards Patton momentarily.

He pretended not to mind it in the slightest, turning his back to it and looking at Virgil and Logan, hoping his smile was at least the smallest bit reassuring. “Speaking of nightmares, I might as well have come from the Halloween Town, because I’m stealing the show of someone else right now,” Patton joked and gestured over his shoulder at the monster nonchalantly. “And I come with a Skelling- _ton_ of jokes! You could call me Jack Skelling- _fun_!”

A very quiet chuckle resounded through the mindspace. Though he hadn’t moved and was still paralyzed with terror, Thomas had laughed, at least in his head.

King scoffed in disbelief. “What a madman… we love it.” They raised their arm to summon a stage. Instantly, the beast snapped out from its momentary shock and charged at King, while its shadowy tendrils reached out towards the stage to take it apart. They pulled a throwing star out of their pocket and threw it in the direction of the tendrils, getting them stuck to the ground, and then aimed a spotlight at Patton, who was climbing up onto the stage. “Go ahead, Daddy’O, show that thing we can shake it!” they gave a wicked grin, but before Patton could respond, the monster struck with one of its talons and sent the knight flying.

“King!” Janus exclaimed, rushing over to the fusion of creativities.

The Side normally in charge of morality gasped, and jumped when their gasp sounded loud and clear. Only when looking met them to him did he realize King had included a microphone when creating the stage, and Patton reached for it. This was no time to discuss morals, this was no time to make things complicated. Right now, they just needed to chase the sadness away. And so, that’s what Patton did.

“S-so, speaking of Halloween, you know those people who have like, unbelievable amounts of absolutely icky chocolate for the trick-or-treaters? I mean, how _can-dies_ people live with that?! I’d say that’s pretty _s-candy-lous_ , isn’t it?”

Another weak laugh sent warmth through each of the Sides. The monster’s focus was no longer on King, who laid unconscious in Janus’ arms, but instead turned to Patton again. The monster seemed to lose its balance for but a moment, before letting out a guttural sound and creeping towards the Side in light blue. He didn’t stop.

“Wow, big guy, you seem like the kind to always look on the _fright_ side of life, huh? You look like you ordered a care package and accidentally used a _scare_ package instead!”

Just then, the monster adapted in the worst way possible. It had sprouted another pair of legs and a handful of eyes appeared at its front.

“Uh-oh,” Patton whimpered at the sight of the biggest and most horrifying spider he’d ever seen, but quickly recollected himself. He had to bring their favourite smile back. “You know, normally even the big spiders fit in your palm, but I think this just got _out of hand_!”

The spider monster screeched, but stayed in place, seemingly straining to move.

“Hah, what’s that, Eight Legs? Did your voice just moved an _octave_ up?? You know, this isn’t really the best job for you, wouldn’t you rather be a _web_ designer? Oh, but I know this one tarantula and she actually does that, you know how I know about that? I _spied ‘er_!”

The spider-shaped darkness reached one of its legs forward, trying to swipe at Patton, but its leg shook and fell to the ground, limp.

“I can’t do this for much longer!” Patton said in a shaky voice, clutching the microphone tightly, eyes on the creature still.

Janus looked up, not letting go of King, and, seeing that the mindspace around them was moments from being swallowed by darkness, yelled at Logan: “Logan! Things aren’t as bad as they look! We’re going to be fine!”

“We are clearly not, what are you saying?!” Virgil retorted.

“We are! We’re calling our friends, and they’ll come and bring help, and we can get better!”

“That’s a lie, Janus, we’re not doing any of that right now!”

Logan perked up though. “No, not right now… but it’s a possibility. Thomas’ friends did help in the past, and so they could help now.” He looked down at Virgil: “Get up, I have to go logic Thomas into finding his phone, and you need to stay with me until this is over.”

“I,” Virgil gasped, unable to move, “I don’t know if I can! I can barely breathe, Logan, I’m sorry!” There were tears in his eyes now, and Logan hated the sight of them. He wasn’t made to handle emotions, he couldn’t do this–

“Guys, you better move it! I’m sort of losing ground here!” Patton shouted at them nervously, with the monster crawling ever closer to him and the shadows tugging at the stage under his feet.

In the blink of an eye, an idea came to Logan. “Janus! Virgil can motivate Thomas enough to get up and call someone, but you need to go with him!”

“WHAT?” both Sides exclaimed.

“You can keep encouraging him! Fake it ‘til you make it, remember?”

“But– King–”

The fusion in his six arms opened their four eyes and spoke up: “Janus, shut the hell up and listen to logic!” And the sentence was so odd coming from them that it gave Janus whiplash, ridding him of his panic for long enough to realize that Logan was right. So, he carefully let go of King.

“You’ll be okay when I get back,” he said partially as an order, partially to convince himself, and then he got up and sprinted over to Virgil. Already, Logan was letting go of the anxious Side, leaving both of them to run and join Patton on the stage. The moral side pulled him up, asking: “Logan what do we do, I’m running out of jokes and out of breath!”

Logan looked up at the beastly creature before them, adjusted his glasses, and smirked. “Not to _bug_ all of you further, but we all remember the basic anatomy of a spider, right? So, Patton, can I _thorax_ you a question? If Quentin Tarantino had the mouth of an arthropod, would one of his most popular movies be _Palp_ Fiction?”

Patton paused, and then bursted out laughing: “Wow Logan, I can’t believe you went _spi-there_!”

Janus and Virgil could hear Patton’s laughter, and it sounded slightly forced, but it helped them not lose control completely.

“Alright, Virgil, listen to me– I said, listen!” Janus grabbed onto Virgil’s shoulders. “You’re going to be fine. All of us are going to be fine. _Thomas_ is going to be fine. What you have to do is very easy, okay?”

Virgil shook his head, refusing to move. “You’re lying! He’s almost gone, we’re losing him, we’re losing ourselves!”

“Am I lying? We haven’t lost him yet! And we’re not about to, so come on!”

Finally, Virgil bit his lip and forced himself to stand up before the determination left him completely. “...okay,” he said, “let’s call for help.”

——————

Fifteen minutes later, Joan slammed the door to Thomas’ house wide open. They found their friend curled up into a ball on his couch, seemingly not moving.

“Thomas, Thomas! You okay?!”

He raised his head just enough to look at them. His eyes were red, and tears were streaming down his face. He was shivering. “No, Joan, I’m really, really not, I– I think I just had a meltdown, and–”

“Okay, it’s okay, don’t worry, I’m here.” Joan rushed over and hugged Thomas tightly, letting him hide his face in their jacket. They let him sob into their chest, waiting for him to catch his breath so they could seek out someone who could better help.

And as he cried, the monster destroying the mindspace was washed away, along with the unnatural darkness. Maybe it was gone completely, maybe it was just pushed into a far corner of Thomas’ mind, but either way, for now they were safe once again.

When Virgil and Janus reappeared back in the mind palace, things were back in their rightful places, and they found Logan and Patton treating injuries of two royal siblings.

“Were King okay??” Virgil asked, because he saw how Janus couldn’t voice his own thoughts.

“They were, for the most part,” Logan replied while bandaging Roman’s arm.

Patton nodded, holding a wet cloth to Remus’ forehead. “They just got thrown around a lot. To be fair, so was I and Logan,” he gestured to a small scratch on his cheek and a bandaid over Logan’s eyebrow, “but that was just few splinters, thank goodness.”

“So we weren’t quick enough,” Virgil whispered, but Janus caught his hand with one of his own to reassure him: “We were. They’re all alright, and Thomas will be as well.”

——————

Joan stayed over to keep an eye on Thomas, spending the night and together they found a professional who could help him properly. Other friends and even his family came over to check on him and remind him that no matter what, they loved him and would be there for him.

And then, it was just Thomas and them, sitting together.

“I’m proud of you for holding yourself together for long enough to call me, Thomas.”

“Wanna know how I did it?”

“Please, tell me.”

“I kept listing all the jokes I ever heard you say.”

“Awh, Thomas!”

“Yeah, it helped me stay on task of calling you. Really relieved you could make it, though, because I was running out of them.”

“Well, I better make more, right?”

“Right. I love your puns so much, you know that?”

“And I love your dad jokes too. I love everything that is you, you’re one of my bestest friends, and I’m glad you’re still here, with all of us.”


End file.
